XM Satellite Radio reported its 2006 subscriber numbers on Friday. Their Canadian arm (TSX: XSR) is holding its AGM on Thursday at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
In November, I wrote about needing to make a purchase decision for extending our satellite radio service when the free trial ended at the end of last year.
As it turns out, XM had a year-end promotion (which has been extended to the end of January), knocking $50 off the annual subscription price – roughly a 30% savings. So I called in to buy on December 22. Despite a friendly agent taking all of the billing and credit card information, our radio stopped working December 30, marking the end of our 90 day trial.
Our agent was friendly, but not trained well enough to know how to work the order entry systems. So he signed us up for a year’s subscription, but forgot to tell the systems not to de-activate our service following the end of our trial.
We had to keep the radio running, tuned to channel 0, waiting for the activation signal to be sent for a second time. XM had to bear the extra cost of a customer service call on top of their discounted rates and a car full of less than impressed customers. The CSR said it happens all the time. If so, that’s no way for XM to make money.
Once again, I have to ask if company executives buy their services through the regular channels, or do they receive complimentary service from an executive response centre. I remain convinced that customer service problems gets fixed fastest if executives see the way normal customers get served.